TAB Scoops Heights On Undergraduate Student's Lawsuit

An editor at the Northeastern News, the student newspaper of Northeastern University, wrote in The Salt Mine that The Heights, the Boston College student newspaper, got scooped on a story that should've been a slam dunk for The Heights to cover.

Who scooped them? The Allston-Brighton TAB, a community newspaper.

At issue? The undergraduate who is part of the lawsuit against the city over the new zoning amendment that limits off-campus undergraduate student apartments to four students or fewer. Her name is Jessica Luccio, and she is a sophomore at BC. It only made sense for a newspaper to run an interview with her to find out why she joined the lawsuit. As of today, a search at the website of The Heights still produces no hit for the name "Luccio".

The NU News editor argued that there were two days for The Heights to file their story after the Boston Herald first named Luccio as part of the lawsuit -- albeit without identifying the university in which she is enrolled. (UniversalHub and Brighton Centered both noted soon after the Herald article that Luccio is an undergraduate at BC, I might add.)

Most of the main-stream media -- and non-MSM bloggers -- don't cover on-campus issues because that is the beat that ought to be covered best by student newspapers. I think there will be some red faces over in Chestnut Hill this week.

What were the stories that The Heights considered more important to run in their April 17th issue? One story was the debut of two flat-screen TVs in the dining hall. Apparently, students voted in February 2007 that these flat-screen TVs were more important than "a push for united social change, reshuffling the [Undergraduate Government at Boston College's] structure to improve efficiency, extending the UGBC's role beyond programming to improve student life, and [having the UGBC serve] as a more representative liaison between the students and the administration."


Image from Mike Wade through Creative Commons license.

BC Spokesman Increases Rhetoric Toward Neighborhood Over Master Plan

Jack Dunn, Director of Public Affairs at Boston College, was quoted last week in the Boston Globe alleging that neighborhood opposition to two proposed dormitories amounts to "NIMBYism." This week, Dunn lobbed another grenade by calling Brighton residents opposing those two proposed dorms "ardent obstructionists" in the BC student newspaper, The Heights.

The Boston Redevelopment Authority last week released its Scoping Determination on BC's proposed master plan requesting a series of alternatives and studies of various elements, particularly undergraduate housing. The document called for BC to increase its undergraduate housing on its main campus, but not to build dormitories on the former St. John's Seminary land purchased by BC in 2004-7.

I noted the inaccuracy -- if not silliness -- of Dunn's earlier statement because it would seem to imply that Mayor Thomas Menino of Hyde Park, who also expressed opposition to the proposal, somehow had a backyard abutting the former seminary land in Brighton. Harry Mattison said that Dunn's statement meant that BC was "No more Mr. Nice Guy."

I expressed hope on Friday that BC officials could "follow Suffolk's lead by showing more politeness towards the community." Maybe Hillary Clinton is right that hope alone doesn't cut it, because today's issue of The Heights finds Dunn adding to his negative rhetoric toward area residents by referring to them as "ardent obstructionists":

"Given the density of our Chestnut Hill Campus, if we could not build 500 beds in the 65 acres of our Brighton Campus, it would mean that an additional 500 students would remain in the neighborhood, which would be to the benefit of no one except the most ardent obstructionists," Dunn said.

Needless to say -- or as Barack Obama might have retorted -- Dunn's remarks show little connection with reality.

While the version of the Scoping Determination that includes public comments has not yet been released, my estimates are that 400 (or more) Brighton residents will be on record with the BRA expressing their opposition to the "Brighton Dorms" on the former seminary land. Sure, some are abutters to the former seminary land, but many live far further away from the proposed dorms -- half a mile or a mile away, like me or residents of the Oak Square area. Abutters are likely a tiny minority of the opposition, so "NIMBYism" rings hollow as the fundamental explanation for the opposition.

Instead of opposing the plan because it's in their backyard, residents across Brighton oppose it because it's a lousy idea. The proposal would: put undergraduate student dormitories in one of the last urban wilds of Brighton (how ironic!); put student housing, a "forbidden" use under Article 51 of the zoning code, in a property with underlying zoning of "Conservation Protection Subdistrict"; and put 500 undergraduate students on land bordered by one of the last stable, family-friendly neighborhoods in Brighton. The "Brighton Dorm" proposal is a dumb idea, and you don't have to live next door to it to realize that.

Dunn's latest "obstructionist" insult appears to be a deliberate misrepresentation of reality: those same public comments will likely show that well over 100 Brighton residents, regularly involved in this process, are on record with the BRA as offering an alternative proposal to house all the rest of BC's students on their main campus -- with plenty of room to spare. Mayor Menino seems to have come to a similar conclusion when he told the Globe, "I say to them, why can't they build the new dorms on the campus they already have? We want to see more housing on the present campus."

Here's how you do it: don't raze 790-bed Edmonds Hall (or replace it on-site); turn two-story Mods into six-story dormitories; add in a dash of the More Hall site (aka "Moore Hall" at The Heights), the Rec Plex site, the far corner of Shea Field, and/or the upper campus; and... voila! 100% on-campus housing and no need for a BC official to be lobbing language like that towards Brighton residents.

The neighborhood's alternative proposal is not obstructionism, it's called "offering solutions." Any other characterization is a mis-characterization.

What might be the next vicious verbal volley to come towards Brighton from BC? Will the neighbors be called "nattering nabobs of negativism"? If Brighton were to succumb, execute an about-face, and march in lockstep behind the proposed master plan, would they then be exhibiting "avid obsequiousness" instead of "ardent obstruction[ism]"?

Local Impacts of Proposed City Ordinance on Student Off-Campus Dwellings

The Boston City Council is considering an ordinance that would petition the Boston Zoning Commission and the Board of the Boston Redevelopment Authority to ban more than four off-campus students from living together in a single apartment. The proposed ordinance will be presented and discussed at Wednesday night's meeting of the Allston Civic Association.

A recent court case and subsequent consent decree defined what kind of living arrangements constitute an illegal boarding-house, which, in effect, loosened up the restrictions. As long as unrelated residents of an apartment shared common space, such as kitchen and bathrooms, do not have locks on individual bedroom doors, and don't individually rent from the owner, then the occupants are considered a "family" unit that can legally rent an apartment together. Off-campus student housing in Allston-Brighton often lawfully exceeds four students per apartment. "Club Kirkwood" is one notable example.

Can students be separately categorized in an ordinance such as this one? Likely yes, according to a government housing specialist contacted recently, because students do not consitute a protected housing class under federal or state law. If Ross's proposed ordinance were to restrict housing on the basis of race, however, it would be illegal, because ethnicity is a protected housing class. (On a related, albeit not identical, issue, Boston College administration officials have recently proposed instituting a ban on their undergraduates from living in 1- and 2-family houses in three zip-codes in Allston-Brighton and Newton, a policy which BC officials have stated publicly several times has been checked for its legality.)

District 8 City Councilor Michael Ross wrote in a January 25, 2008 letter to John Palmieri, the Director of the BRA:

Since [2003] the current definition of family remains unresolved, causing an ambiguity in the law and its enforcement. As a result, unscrupulous landlords have taken advantage of this limbo by packing upwards of ten students into college apartments that once housed families. These actions have subsequently raised rents to a level where virtually no one can afford to live within certain neighborhoods of the city. The proposed change to the zoning code will require that landlords cap the number of students living within one dwelling to four, thereby restoring a semblance of control to what has become an escalating crisis.

BC's student newspaper, The Heights, ran a news story on the issue and also an editorial opposing the proposed ordinance. The editorial says that the proposed ordinance treats students "unfairly" and is "counter-productive to the constituency it seeks to placate" -- i.e., "neighbor's concerns about loud parties and poorly-kept residences."

As the aforementioned example of Club Kirkwood indicated, however, the problems of the over-crowded housing are code violations and dangerous conditions. I wrote back in October 2007:

As Bill Mills noted at the October 16th meeting of the BC Task Force, they allegedly found smoke detectors had been removed from the ceilings, missing CO detectors, underage drinking, and so on. A sting operation was planned for inspectors from the city's Inspectional Services Department, which identified other problems -- such as residents illegally housed in the basement, others housed in parts of the attic that don't meet height requirements, and locks on the bedroom doors (that might have constituted an illegal boarding house).

The news story in The Heights makes a series of unattributed statements, some of which appear to be factually incorrect. An example:

The effect [of the ordinance on student-occupied off-campus housing] is not wholly seen in the Brighton area that surrounds BC, mainly because most of the houses are owned by the people living in them.

The owner-occupied housing rate was only 19.3% in Allston-Brighton in the 2000 U. S. Census; in Brighton alone, the rate was 23.6%. Of owner-occupied housing in Allston-Brighton, only 26% of the units had more than 0.5 persons per room, while 49% of renter-occupied housing units did. The conclusion from the census data: most of Allston-Brighton's housing stock is renter-occupied, and the rental units are, on average, more packed with occupants than the owner-occupied units. It is hard to know where The Heights gathered its facts since so many of the story's statements, such as the one above, have no attribution.

Small Property Owners of America opposes the proposed ordinance, providing a series of arguments against it: displacement and high rents; de facto rent control and devaluation; housing shortage and higher rents; and college and university concerns.


Councilors Ross and Ciommo to Attend ACA Meeting on Proposed Ordinance

Councilors Michael Ross and Mark Ciommo will be appearing at a meeting Wednesday night of the Allston Civic Association in order to discuss the proposed ordinance.

Councilor Ross submitted the original petition in December 2007. His office is spearheading the effort to pass the ordinance. In a community-wide letter sent out recently by staff member Johanna Sena, she anticipates that "this issue will be coming before the BRA Board for their approval at the end of February and before the Zoning Commission in early March."

The text of the ordinance proposes a change in the definition of "family" under the Boston Zoning Code, so that it would be defined as:

'Family' one person or two or more persons related by blood, marriage, adoption or other analogous family union occupying a dwelling unit and living as a single, nonprofit housekeeping unit, provided that a group of five (5) or more students enrolled at or attending a post-secondary educational institution shall not be deemed to constitute a family. A group residence, limited... shall be deemed a family.

The meeting of the Allston Civic Association will be:

Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Honan-Allston Library
300 North Harvard Street
Allston, MA 02134

Other items on the agenda are listing at Harry Mattison's blog.

Some questions I would like to see addressed in the meeting:

• How will the city prevent the landlords from obtaining zoning variances in order to chop up the housing into smaller and smaller units to keep each unit's occupancy below five?
• What is that anticipated increase in expense for off-campus housing for various neighborhoods of the city, e.g., Brighton, where occupancy would suddenly switch from, say, ten tenants to four?
• What are the universities' plans for dealing with the added increase in off-campus housing that will result? In particular, what would Boston College possibly do to provide on-campus housing for its students with greatest financial need who might not be able to deal with the rental increase?
• If half the Radnor/Kirkwood/Upper Foster area off-campus students, for example, were suddenly required to find alternative housing, where do real estate professionals believe that they would be most likely to move in the current housing market?
• What fraction of the impacted rental units are suitable for family housing, and what fraction are excessively-sized such that they are beyond the needs and/or means of most families?

UPDATE: UniversalHub has a series of comments posted about this topic.

Letters to the Boston Globe About BC's Expansion

The Boston Globe published two letters-to-the-editor in response to their editorial earlier in the week that questioned the merit of part of Boston College's master plan related to undergraduate housing.

Pilar Landon, editor-in-chief of BC's student newspaper, The Heights, writes that "it is unfair to ignore the many academic, extracurricular, and athletic achievements of students and to discount them with these sweeping generalizations," such as "a well-earned reputation for hard drinking and loud partying."

Eva Webster of the Chestnut Hill Reservoir Coalition stated that the Globe editorial missed pointing out BC's poor choice in locating some dorms directly across the street from the reservoir. "If some other school wanted to build undergraduate dormitories on the edge of Jamaica Pond, would anyone be surprised by public opposition to that?"

Links and Media Coverage of BC's Announcement of Institutional Master Plan

Last night, Boston College announced their new institutional master plan, and today they filed it with the city of Boston.

BC Documents:
BC press release about master plan (PDF, 3 pages)
BC press release about strategic plan (PDF, 2 pages)
10-Year Master Plan Map (PDF, 1 page, low-resolution)
Strategic Plan website, "Towers of Excellence"
Institutional Master Plan online (PDF, 19 separate files)
BC main website, which currently links all mainstream media coverage of their master plan

Media Coverage:
Boston Globe:  "Grand expansion at BC:  $1.6b plan calls for faculty increase, massive construction"
Boston Herald:  "Eagles let fly $1.6B plan:  BC to grow out, add 100 profs"
BC's The Heights (student newspaper):  "BC unveils $1.6 billion strategic plan"
Associated Press:  "Boston College Seeks $1.6B Expansion"

From the Boston Globe:

Boston College plans to spend $1.6 billion over the next decade to expand and rebuild its Chestnut Hill campus, bolster its faculty by 15 percent, and create a dozen academic institutes in a far-reaching effort to vault the Jesuit college into the top echelon of the nation's universities...

"There will be extensive construction on campus for at least the next seven to 10 years," Leahy said. He added the college would stagger construction and would borrow substantially to finance the project, but would not tap its $1.7 billion endowment or raise tuition beyond normal increases.

From the Boston Herald:

To support the initiative, President William Leahy said BC is eyeing what will likely be its largest capital campaign ever.

The college will likely have to raise as much as $1 billion to make the expansion possible.

BC’s largest fund-raising campaign to date netted $440 million and ended in 2003.

From The Heights:

Culminating years of studies and planning, the unprecedented 10-year plan will hire 100 new faculty members, establish new academic institutes, and increase the annual budget of academic departments by $43.5 million...

A significant portion of the construction costs will also be financed through acquisition of debt, which is the typical protocol for University construction projects. To date, BC carries $630 million in debt...

Meetings with the [BC] Task Force have been a source of debate between the University and the local residents, who have expressed their concerns with bringing students closer to an otherwise quiet neighborhood. "We know there will be concerns on this development on this space which has been like a park for the neighborhood, and we have been meeting with them for a year and a half and have made necessary changes to the plan," Leahy said. Those changes include moving student housing farther away from Lake Street, which will use the natural barrier of the surrounding trees and gradient change to keep students and noise insulated within campus.

BC Announces New "Zero-Tolerance" Policy on Student Behavior -- Then Denies It!

At the last Boston College Task Force meeting on Tuesday, August 21, 2007, BC officials apparently presented their new (or updated) student behavior policy. The A-B TAB came through with a report on that policy.

I hadn't blogged on it for a few reasons:

1. I didn't attend the meeting, being away on vacation;
2. BC provided an online copy of their presentation [PDF] made to the task force meeting, but that document nowhere states what their student behavior policy is, meaning that the policy was only presented verbally (if at all) at the meeting;
3. The TAB reporting seems confused about who has a "zero-tolerance" policy towards student behavior -- BC or the Boston Police Department [see below];
   
4. BC was planning on notifying the students of the behavior policy, so a written notification could provide clues and insight; and
5. I wanted to talk to some residents who attended the meeting to figure out what was actually said.
   

Thursday we find out that lots of people, including students at BC, are confused about the BC student behavior policy. I was not alone in my confusion.


Confusion Over BC's Student Behavior Policy

It is now abundantly clear that BC's student behavior policy is unclear.

BC's student newspaper, The Heights, reports today in an article titled, "Off-campus Policy Causes Confusion", that nearly every action spelled out in the BC Task Force meeting on August 21, 2007 is just a continuation of existing BC policy. I am not making this up! Nearly everything is unchanged from before, according to The Heights:

University officials purport that there has been no change to BC policies and that there were inaccuracies in an Aug. 22 Allston-Brighton Tab [sic] article.

That sounds to be in line with how BU's The Daily Free Press is reporting it:

"There was a misperception among students that somehow BC was encouraging Boston police to arrest students," said BC spokesman Jack Dunn. "Nothing could be further from the truth. . . . We are reminding our students that if they break the law in the neighborhoods, they will be held accountable."

Students say they do not understand the policy's logic, though, and are even calling the new initiative hypocritical.

"It's really absurd for a university to target its students," said sophomore Charlie Mangiardi, creator of a Facebook.com group opposing the policy. "BC prides itself on how well it takes care of its students, so to then go out and say that to please their neighbors they are going out to arrest us, that's just infuriating."

Here is a list of elements of the student behavior policy that are not new:

• Boston Police Arresting Students:

  "The manner of the conversation was my attempt to warn students about an ongoing yearly event. Boston Police comes in and makes sweeps of problem neighborhoods at the beginning of every year," [BC Police Chief police chief Robert] Morse said.

  See also the quote [above] from Jack Dunn: "There was a misperception among students that somehow BC was encouraging Boston police to arrest students."

• BC Hiring Boston Police Details:

  "BC has been hiring Boston Police to supplement the normal neighborhood patrols every year," [Morse] said.

• Deputy Sheriff Powers: BC Police appear to have had these powers within Suffolk and Middlesex Counties for several years.

What is the one thing that is new, according to Morse?

"The new thing about the supplemental patrols has been the addition of one BCPD officer to the patrol in problematic [areas]," Morse said.

There is actually one other new policy this fall: off-campus student liaison Steve Montgomery will be working Thursday nights (PDF, see page 8), in addition to Friday and Saturday nights.

Basically, the article in The Heights contradicts several of the points raised in the article in the Allston-Brighton TAB. My summary of their "new" policy on student behavior: staying the course, but having one BC Police officer join BPD officers in a joint patrol.

At the BC Task Force meeting, did BC really pitch the student behavior policy as something new? You would think that based on one official's comment:

“We are sending a message, setting the tone, and we want to see how this works,” said BC’s vice president of [government and] community affairs, Tom Keady.

Yet "BC officials" (presumably Dunn and/or Morse) convinced the student newspaper that nothing but the joint patrols is new. And they are trying to backtrack on BC police chief Morse's comments at the meeting:

“Zero tolerance means they’ll be arrested,” Morse said. “We’re hiring Boston Police to arrest students.”

What Was Actually Seen Over the Weekend

Morse's new claim -- that this policy is nearly unchanged -- doesn't exactly jive with what neighbors and students saw over the weekend:

• Several university officials were walking the neighborhood in the afternoons of Thursday-Saturday;
  
• BPD cruisers were parked in the area and often seen driving down nearby access streets (this is an historically uncommon occurrence, according to neighbors); and
  
• Groups of BPD officers -- as many as seven or eight at one point on Radnor Road! -- were seen on foot patrol in the areas of off-campus undergraduate housing.

There was one report of undergraduates who were worried by the visibly-increased police presence, while several neighbors report that they are waiting until after the next few weekends (now that the students' parents have left) to see if there is any change.

Several neighbors tell me that this police presence is an increase from the past, which appears to contradict Dunn and/or Morse's assertion that nothing is new except one extra BC police officer on the patrols.


Confusion Over the Meaning of "Zero-Tolerance"

While the A-B TAB reported BC's policy as "zero-tolerance" for poor student behavior, that doesn't sound like an accurate description of the actual policy:

Any student arrested is put on university probation, and another incident will result in a one-year suspension from the school, [interim Dean of Students Paul] Chebator said.

BC's new rules are that one arrest results in probation, two arrests in suspension, and three arrests in... unspecified, I think, but presumably expulsion. That sounds like a "three-strikes-and-you're-out" policy, not "zero-tolerance." "Zero-tolerance" would mean expulsion after only one arrest. A decade or so ago, "three-strikes-and-you're-out" was the phrase on everybody's lips (to deal with repeat offenders in California), while "zero-tolerance" is a term more popular in recent years.

BC Police Chief Robert Morse clarified: "zero-tolerance" is a reference to arresting off-campus students at disruptive parties, rather than just breaking up the parties and sending them home.

So this is what it means:

• BPD Captain Genevieve King is pushing a "zero-tolerance" policy towards student party houses in arresting students rather than simply breaking up parties.
• BC is pushing a "three-strikes-and-you're-out" policy towards student off-campus behavior, with an interim "two-strikes-and-you're-suspended" policy.
  

Student Concerns and Push-Back

It sounds to me like BC is sketching out to the neighbors a broad crackdown on off-campus student behavior, but is denying it when talking to the students. What a dance!

The truth will come in the next couple of weeks: if there are widespread arrests by BPD at a particular party house, then we'll know that BC is encouraging BPD's policy; if not, then it will all be smoke-and-mirrors with the neighbors.

I bet BC gets a lot of push-back from the students on a policy that could seem Orwellian to them. Expect to see letters, op-eds, and editorials in the student newspaper, The Heights; anger directed at neighbors perceived as the instigators; parents steaming mad when students call for bail money and explain their sudden return home following suspension; etc. In fact, we are already seeing some of it: 200 BC students have signed a petition and delivered it to BC President Leahy.

The larger situation of off-campus behavior -- a conflict between the neighbors and the students -- may get worse before it gets better.


What Is Going On At BC?

Why is BC taking this giant leap into possible wide-spread arrests of their students? Most likely the combination of the past year being the worst in the past five for unruly student behavior off-campus (according to BC VP Thomas Keady, Jr., at the May 15 BC Task Force meeting) and BC's desire to get a new institutional master plan approved by the Boston Redevelopment Authority -- an IMP that still would leave many undergraduate students living in off-campus houses. If BC officials think that cracking down on student behavior will lead to the neighbors acquiescing on the proposal for undergraduate dorms on the former seminary land, then I think they are quite wrong.

My prediction is that the community will welcome the BC administration taking a more active and aggressive role in dealing with off-campus student behavior, but will not back down on housing all the undergraduates on the Main Campus. I'm not sure that BC's new student behavior plan, however, is exactly what the neighborhood -- or the police -- would have preferred.

In July, new Captain Genevieve King of BPD D-14 told me she considered it to be stronger punishment to suspend students, rather than arrest them; apparently, students have been arrested many times in the past without their parents finding out, but once they were suspended the parents found out and all hell broke loose. I too have heard students complain vehemently about parental notification, so Captain King makes a convincing point. It is quite conceivable that BC could crack-down on the behavior without hiring any BPD police details, making student arrests, seeing the cases through the Boston Municipal Court system, etc., if BC's "zero-tolerance" policy instead consisted of immediate suspension for unruly behavior off-campus. Quite simply: BC could solve the problem if they had the resolve, but it is obvious they "don't want to go there." It is a university, after all.

The new plan may be a good move, nonetheless, and bodes well for improved town-gown relations in the future. We'll see how effectively this program -- whether or not it is new -- can be implemented.

BC's Edmonds Hall will "have to be torn down"

Four of Boston College's vice presidents spoke on Tuesday night about the "State of the Heights." As quoted in the BC newspaper, Executive Vice President Patrick Keating said:

"There aren't a lot of empty spots on campus so we have to build very carefully," said Keating, "Cushing, McElroy, Edmonds, the Plex, and More Hall have to be torn down. But you can't tear those down without replacements. It's a musical chairs, domino sequence."

Edmonds Hall is a 790-bed undergraduate dorm. The domino effect caused by its demolition would put a 600-bed pair of replacement undergraduate dorms into the "Brighton Campus," i.e., the former Archdiocese's property, according to BC's plans presented at previous BC Task Force meetings.

Will Newton's Own Development Pave the Way for BC's Master Plan?

A March 27, 2007 editorial in the BC newspaper, "The Allston-Brighton-Boston-Newton College's The Heights," discusses the City of Newton's plan to build a parking garage in Newton Center:

"Apparently a five-story parking garage is not too tall. Needless to say, if these proposals for Newton Centre are accepted, the city of Newton will have little grounds for denying BC the buildings that will be a part of the upcoming campus masterplan."

While the editorial does go on to ask Newton to "carefully consider this proposal," the editorial provides a justification for BC's master plans (in Newton) based on Newton Center's development project located a mile or so away.

I think that the editors at the newspaper may need a little education on zoning. A structure that is perfectly suited to one site can be wrong for another. We don't build the Prudential Center in Brighton Center, for example, nor do we build student dormitories in the middle of Boston Common. The neighborhood bordering BC's proposed buildings in the upper campus needs to be considered when evaluating if the proposal is appropriate; likewise, the shopping district bordering Newton's proposed parking structure in Newton Center needs to be considered when addressing its appropriateness.

Allston-Brighton-Boston College Community Task Force? Huh?

In a recent article and editorial in the Boston College newspaper, The Heights, they referred to the Boston College Task Force as the "Allston-Brighton Task Force."

Hmmmm... "Boston College Task Force" is a proper noun (that is why it is capitalized), so a publication cannot unilaterally change the committee's name. Furthermore, the Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA) has formed four different task forces in Allston-Brighton: Harvard Allston Task Force, St. Elizabeth's (Medical Center) Task Force, Boston College Task Force, and the Boston University Task Force (which admittedly only deals with a corner of Allston-Brighton). The newspaper's invented name is vague; a reader might not know which task force is being referred to (although the context makes it clear).

A question posed to the reporter returned the information that they meant to write, "Allston-Brighton-Boston College Community Task Force." Whew. What a mouthful. But it is yet another name invented by the newspaper.

The correct name is the "Boston College Task Force." If BC employees or students don't like using that name because it suggests it is officially affiliated with the university (which it is not), then a reasonable alternative would be the "BRA's Boston College Task Force."

I wrote this suggestion to the reporter who writes for the "Allston-Brighton-Boston-Newton College's The Heights" newspaper, since I'm not a fan of making up names. We'll see what happens.